An expert on the undeciphered ancient Cypro-Minoan script, philologist Silvia Ferrara is the founder of a research group focused on the invention of writing, known by the acronym "INSCRIBE" (Invention of Scripts and Their Beginnings). The group organizes scholarly lectures on writing that ranges from the four crucial ancient scripts widely accepted to be of independent origin (Chinese characters, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Mayan glyphs, and Mesopotamian cuneiform) to undeciphered scripts such as the Indus script of Pakistan and India, the Isthmian script of Mesoamerica, Linear A of the eastern Mediterranean, Rong-orongo of Rapa Nui (Easter Island), and the notoriously singular Phais-tos Disk of Crete. All these scripts receive attention in Ferrara's newly translated book, The Greatest Invention: A History of the World in Nine Mysterious Scripts-an intellectually stimulating, deliberately chatty, remarkably diverse survey of the invention and significance of writing in both the ancient and modern worlds.
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